MONTHLY MEETING Date: March 19, 2012 Venue: Info Centre Break-out Room Time: 14:00 - 16.30
Agenda:
Results from the Montpellier meeting in February;
NBDC publication strategies and science in CPWF;
Seminar series for NBDC;
Informing CPWF current developments;
Results from the comms meeting in February;
Planning 2012: workplans and planning of reflection workshops;
Brief update from Project leaders;
Action points are indicated in red. Questions and suggestions are indicated in blue.
Discussion minutes
A special guest today is Martin van Brakel, from the CPWF research team. The recent 'research into use' activities such as the termite management project have much potential to link up with the CPWF and Martin's team is working on this.
Results from the Montpellier meeting in February
On the project blog there is one post about this.
The idea was to bring together basin leaders as well as topic working group (TWG) leaders to strengthen interactions.
One of the key issues was the concern, from CRP5 and Board members about 'where is the science'?
Another key concern was to consolidate the TWG's and to integrate them e.g. research into use and policy, African platforms, new groups such as governance etc.
No immediate decision about this but different components are hopefully coming together. Some news to expect on this front in mid-April.
Another point was about the phase 1 book. There are 8 chapters planned. NBDC is leading one of them but there's also an idea to publish a special issue on rainwater management (slightly delayed).
NBDC publication strategies and science in CPWF
How to encourage publications in the programme, featuring the science coming from CPWF?
How to promote integrated, cross-disciplinary outputs with good contributions?
Simon: Interdisciplinary publications are difficult wrt to the language used (across disciplines involved) and to find outlets to publish cross-disciplinary work. Looking at the NBDC work concentrated on 3 areas (social, economic and biophysical aspects) there should be good matter for publication. Perhaps there is a point for a writeshop about these publications?
Project leaders have to identify opportunities for partnering across the research areas. A writeshop really helps. Having students come up with postdocs etc. to develop first draft and then have other staff review and polish the papers in those writeshops. It takes commitment and time but it is a very interesting approach.
Kathryn (had a recent experience with a writeshop): It worked very well, outside the office you get the job done. But it is a lot of work for editors. It needs more than one person. Ideally it also involves someone for the copy-editing.
The other option is to recruit a consultant to work for a month or two who will prepare the drafts. Tilahun to come up with a proposal of one page about this? Kindie, Teklu and other post-docs can help with this?
The project leaders can help identify the papers etc.
We will invite both contributions (planned papers from individual projects + multi-disciplinary papers across the Nile projects). Perhaps there is a point, once the 1-pager by Tilahun is developed and project leaders have identified other ideas for papers, we could sit together and try to build the collective picture of NBDC research work - this could be a good input for a writeshop.
The idea of having a consultant help could be good?
In teams, it's good to focus on people that feel comfortable writing (for the writeshop etc.)
Catherine's planned outputs are all on the wiki, as well as data work.
Teklu: data is in but not clean.
Tilahun: rainwater management strategy paper in the pipeline - (to be updated).
Berhanu is also working on a paper.
Mulugeta has another paper on ?? Everyone is expected to update the publication pipeline page on the wiki with upcoming publications.
CPWF current developments
Therer has been a recent discussion about CRP5 (and other CRPs) and how they are evolving. There is a budget cut for all CRPs (about 28%). CRP5 has asked CPWF to cut budget by 43% and CPWF is asking every basin to reduce budget by 21%. There has been much protest about this - and how to communicate to partners with whom we have signed contracts etc. Some projects may not get an extension.
There is a suggested strategy to chase the 5 million dollars required. Everyone here has to restrict budget, potentially redesign work packages and deliverables. This is for 2012, with the hope that there is a payback/compensation effect in 2013. In April, after the Board meeting there will be an update about budget implications.
Basin leaders are very unhappy about this development, partners outside CGIAR too. But the management team don't have many options.
We all have to be cautious about spending on e.g. field visits etc.
Seminar series for NBDC
Kathryn Snyder has started this series. Catherine Pfeifer is planning a seminar on the N3 topic for this week.
The idea is to have a regular (monthly) series of these seminars.
In IWMI there is an idea to have a regular series of seminars but this hasn't started yet. Perhaps it is possible to have this IWMI series join up with that of NBDC rather than have a parallel series.
The idea is Friday afternoon every month, to continue the conversation at the Zebu.
One seminar on innovation systems could be good - the paper about this is in preparation (Kebede) and this will need follow up.
These seminars will be campus-wide.
The first seminar will be on ?? and is scheduled for April.
Results from the comms meeting in February
Training would be great. Experiences from IPMS would be useful (using portal - e.g. Ethiopian agricultural portal) to keep track of all the outputs available. Perhaps we can also translate some documents in Amharic.
We have a website that we can use.
We have a brief series that we started which we can strengthen.
We are communicating with the international community - a challenging task is that we are not well known locally.
Are there other channels (e.g. through EIAR, Ministry of Water) to link up our information with them to raise awareness - link up with their portal.
We can pick up the briefs and working papers to spread them in the centers (where the internet is not easily available).
MSC stories were a good incentive to develop outputs - we should continue with this.
We are still lagging behind on our internal communication but our external communication is even worse - we have to develop that comms strategy with more focus on external comms e.g. using local media, with something interesting for local level. Some papers that wee produce could be synthesised in more lay-language (what are the highlights). There is a lot of work done on rainwater harvesting - what can we contribute to this interest? Using newspapers to mention what NBDC is and what it is doing would be helpful.
Radio news in the morning 'Earth... (sthg)' could also be used + Farm Radio International? At this point we can use materials such as brochures, fact sheets etc. to distribute them in IP meetings etc.
We have a national platform with 55 institutes etc. that represents our primary target audience. We can use The Monitor to publish news about water etc.
The cards that CPWF phase 1 produced (in English) - we could translate those cards, take them to communities and find out how to make them more 'Ethiopianised'. Perhaps we could use an intern to do this.
Follow-up points:
Revamping comms strategy (5-pager);
Come back to project leaders about key contents that we can use (repackage);
Discuss this later again;
Komms Klinic session for NBDC group?
Tilahun and Simon to consider contacting The Monitor;
Planning 2012: workplans and planning of reflection workshops
Bi-annual reflection workshop. (Not discussed).
Brief update from Project leaders
N5:
3 outputs.
A) Communication and facilitation (brief supported by comms group) with linkages to national platform and national institutions.
B) Fostering change through platforms and debates (in 2011 NP established, now 5 working groups: institutional innovation, technological innovation, land and water management, policy influencing and finally resilient ecosystems - all these groups are developing terms of reference to share with national platform steering committee which will give feedback). NBDC moving away from host to facilitator - promised to develop website for national platform, to use our comms group (create a space for them) and assist in providing infrastructures and office.
C) Rainwater management book for Africa. Planning to encourage 12 people to develop a draft, share with us and based on that draft to finalise in a writeshop and to submit to a journal (Water Alternatives?). Adaptive management is important due to changing priorities on the ground
We are missing the external communication - in 2012 the key strategy is to communicate externally, together with all of you to develop key products.
We are planning to work in more focused ways on rainwater management in Ethiopia. There is a lot going on in this field so what can we do - so where is our added value?
A lot of reporting - everyone preparing reports. Tilahun has 10 days to compile all technical/financial reports and so far only 1 report in.
N4:
Solomon, Catherine and Charlotte working on SWOT model;
New contacts from SEI (some of them have joined the SAM group) - work transferred from SEI head SEI-USA (for the basin scale modeling).
Kindie's work's progressing, in line with Andy's group;
Kindie published a paper on some of his early work;
Recruiting another post-doc on modeling to bring all aspects of modeling together and will do a lot of Kindie's work and hydrophysical modeling;
Students progressing slowly;
??? Combination with N4 -
One more PhD student directly related to the project from Bahar Dar, going now to Cornell and will come back next year.
Many challenges - no progress getting inputs from ILRI.
Solomon ran a 3-day training on extension-communication. WEAP.
N3:
Trying to map the rainwatermanagement strategies at the landscape scale. 8 maps planned, one should come up tomorrow. This will be transformed in a GIS open source tool and we'll promote this tool by organising a ToT to rerun the training on that tool to all research centers in which they're working.
Involved in collecting efficient data to validate those maps. N2 has collected lots of information on sites - we'll use partners to help and will use the 'happy strategy' game (to be rolled out and soon translated in Amharic and Oromiffa)
Land use/cover: not sure what the status is.
Have a look on the wiki if you want to get help from uss to collect data.
N2:
Given cuts, trying to consolidate this year. Taking on very little new stuff;
In the pipeline, trying to arrange sthg with ICRAF and Addis Uni to do ground-truthing on ??
Hydrological monitoring - started in August and has to keep going. More equipment on order to extend networks and replace equipments (stolen);
IPs: progressing. Beth, Alemayehu and Mulugeta ran a participatory training workshop on Fogera which focused on free grazing.
Trying to think about linking through with 2 European projects: AfroMaison (reflecting on participatory techniques) and impact related to climate change - linked with Charlotte's work. Fogera is overloaded.
Participatory video work from Beth was screened a while back and needs to be discussed for ways forward;
Met up with the PhD from UNESCO-IHE and need to discuss this with Charlotte and Kathryn;
ICRAF stuff ongoing and finally promised at CRP-5 meeting by end of April.
Sent a consultant at same time as PV work on livelihoods in Fogera - the 2 consultants are narrowing down on adoption and issues of water and soil - clouded up in free grazing and the campaigning going on. Interesting insights from work in Fogera: Massive increased use of water pumps (threadle pump, for surface water) in Fogera. Institutionally, not many mechanisms to deal with this. This needs to be flagged. No mechanism to sit down collectively and make decisions to use resources across the landscape. This is one of the 3 measures raised. Community also raised this issue. There are lots of useful ways to deal with this.
Add-on project on termites (RIU) with kick-off workshop from last week.
IP meeting in Diga taking place this week. Termites in Diga and Free-grazing + watershed management in Fogera were discussed by IP members. There are barriers to those issues - we have to find ways around this.
There is a lot of participatory work that is boiling up - perhaps an interesting case for a publication on how to work on participatory methods and roll out some things that our communities have learnt.
Kathryn to develop a strategy to minimise surface water depletion and create collective action.
Date: March 19, 2012
Venue: Info Centre Break-out Room
Time: 14:00 - 16.30
Agenda:
Action points are indicated in red. Questions and suggestions are indicated in blue.
Discussion minutes
A special guest today is Martin van Brakel, from the CPWF research team. The recent 'research into use' activities such as the termite management project have much potential to link up with the CPWF and Martin's team is working on this.
Results from the Montpellier meeting in February
On the project blog there is one post about this.The idea was to bring together basin leaders as well as topic working group (TWG) leaders to strengthen interactions.
One of the key issues was the concern, from CRP5 and Board members about 'where is the science'?
Another key concern was to consolidate the TWG's and to integrate them e.g. research into use and policy, African platforms, new groups such as governance etc.
No immediate decision about this but different components are hopefully coming together. Some news to expect on this front in mid-April.
Another point was about the phase 1 book. There are 8 chapters planned. NBDC is leading one of them but there's also an idea to publish a special issue on rainwater management (slightly delayed).
NBDC publication strategies and science in CPWF
How to encourage publications in the programme, featuring the science coming from CPWF?How to promote integrated, cross-disciplinary outputs with good contributions?
Simon: Interdisciplinary publications are difficult wrt to the language used (across disciplines involved) and to find outlets to publish cross-disciplinary work. Looking at the NBDC work concentrated on 3 areas (social, economic and biophysical aspects) there should be good matter for publication. Perhaps there is a point for a writeshop about these publications?
Project leaders have to identify opportunities for partnering across the research areas. A writeshop really helps. Having students come up with postdocs etc. to develop first draft and then have other staff review and polish the papers in those writeshops. It takes commitment and time but it is a very interesting approach.
Kathryn (had a recent experience with a writeshop): It worked very well, outside the office you get the job done. But it is a lot of work for editors. It needs more than one person. Ideally it also involves someone for the copy-editing.
The other option is to recruit a consultant to work for a month or two who will prepare the drafts.
Tilahun to come up with a proposal of one page about this? Kindie, Teklu and other post-docs can help with this?
The project leaders can help identify the papers etc.
We will invite both contributions (planned papers from individual projects + multi-disciplinary papers across the Nile projects).
Perhaps there is a point, once the 1-pager by Tilahun is developed and project leaders have identified other ideas for papers, we could sit together and try to build the collective picture of NBDC research work - this could be a good input for a writeshop.
The idea of having a consultant help could be good?
In teams, it's good to focus on people that feel comfortable writing (for the writeshop etc.)
Catherine's planned outputs are all on the wiki, as well as data work.
Teklu: data is in but not clean.
Tilahun: rainwater management strategy paper in the pipeline - (to be updated).
Berhanu is also working on a paper.
Mulugeta has another paper on ??
Everyone is expected to update the publication pipeline page on the wiki with upcoming publications.
CPWF current developments
Therer has been a recent discussion about CRP5 (and other CRPs) and how they are evolving. There is a budget cut for all CRPs (about 28%). CRP5 has asked CPWF to cut budget by 43% and CPWF is asking every basin to reduce budget by 21%. There has been much protest about this - and how to communicate to partners with whom we have signed contracts etc. Some projects may not get an extension.There is a suggested strategy to chase the 5 million dollars required.
Everyone here has to restrict budget, potentially redesign work packages and deliverables. This is for 2012, with the hope that there is a payback/compensation effect in 2013. In April, after the Board meeting there will be an update about budget implications.
Basin leaders are very unhappy about this development, partners outside CGIAR too. But the management team don't have many options.
We all have to be cautious about spending on e.g. field visits etc.
Seminar series for NBDC
Kathryn Snyder has started this series. Catherine Pfeifer is planning a seminar on the N3 topic for this week.The idea is to have a regular (monthly) series of these seminars.
In IWMI there is an idea to have a regular series of seminars but this hasn't started yet. Perhaps it is possible to have this IWMI series join up with that of NBDC rather than have a parallel series.
The idea is Friday afternoon every month, to continue the conversation at the Zebu.
One seminar on innovation systems could be good - the paper about this is in preparation (Kebede) and this will need follow up.
These seminars will be campus-wide.
The first seminar will be on ?? and is scheduled for April.
Results from the comms meeting in February
Training would be great.Experiences from IPMS would be useful (using portal - e.g. Ethiopian agricultural portal) to keep track of all the outputs available.
Perhaps we can also translate some documents in Amharic.
We have a website that we can use.
We have a brief series that we started which we can strengthen.
We are communicating with the international community - a challenging task is that we are not well known locally.
Are there other channels (e.g. through EIAR, Ministry of Water) to link up our information with them to raise awareness - link up with their portal.
We can pick up the briefs and working papers to spread them in the centers (where the internet is not easily available).
MSC stories were a good incentive to develop outputs - we should continue with this.
We are still lagging behind on our internal communication but our external communication is even worse - we have to develop that comms strategy with more focus on external comms e.g. using local media, with something interesting for local level.
Some papers that wee produce could be synthesised in more lay-language (what are the highlights).
There is a lot of work done on rainwater harvesting - what can we contribute to this interest?
Using newspapers to mention what NBDC is and what it is doing would be helpful.
Radio news in the morning 'Earth... (sthg)' could also be used + Farm Radio International?
At this point we can use materials such as brochures, fact sheets etc. to distribute them in IP meetings etc.
We have a national platform with 55 institutes etc. that represents our primary target audience.
We can use The Monitor to publish news about water etc.
The cards that CPWF phase 1 produced (in English) - we could translate those cards, take them to communities and find out how to make them more 'Ethiopianised'. Perhaps we could use an intern to do this.
Follow-up points:
Planning 2012: workplans and planning of reflection workshops
Bi-annual reflection workshop. (Not discussed).Brief update from Project leaders
N5:N4:
N3:
N2:
N1: